Abstract
This chapter introduces a reflexive research strategy outlining a critical approach that seeks to examine the impact of the uprisings in West Asia and North Africa (WANA)1 on international politics. Although the protests and contentious politics are rather local in character, I argue that they are not merely occurrences of claims making, but processes in which perceptions and imaginations as well as normative assumptions central to dominant notions of international relations are substantially reshaped. Therefore, research on international relations has to engage with these processes and practices as they uncover normative shifts that are crucial for the legitimacy of politics, but are difficult to illuminate through dominant IR theories as they are often infused with a “Westphalian narrative.”
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
P. Bilgin, “Whose ‘Middle East’? Geopolitical Inventions and Practices of Security,” International Relations 18, no. 1 (2004);
A. Adib-Moghaddam, A Metahistory of the Clash of Civilisations: Us and Them beyond Orientalism (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2011), 172.
S. Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 203.
R. D. Benford, “Framing Global Governance from Below: Discursive Opportunities and Challenges in the Transnational Social Movement Arena,” in Arguing Global Governance: Agency, Lifeworld, and Shared Reasons, ed. Corneliu Bjola and Markus Kornprobst (London; New York: Routledge, 2011).
D. Delia Porta, M. Andretta, L. Mosca, and H. Reiter, Globalization from below: Transnational Activists and Protest Networks (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).
A. Wiener, “Global Constitutionalism,” in Oxford Bibliographies Online: International Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
I. Hamati-Ataya, “The ‘Problem of Values’ and International Relations Scholarship: From Applied Reflexivity to Reflexivism,” International Studies Review 13, no. 2 (2011);
I. Hamati-Ataya, “Reflectivity, Reflexivity, Reflexivism: It’s ‘Reflexive Turn’— and beyond,” European Journal of International Relations 19, no. 4 (2013).
For example, H. M. Tagma, E. Kalaycioglu, and E. Akcali, “‘Taming’ Arab Social Movements: Exporting Neoliberal Governmentality,” Security Dialogue 44, no. 5-6 (2013);
G.Achcar, The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising, trans. G. M. Goshgarian. (London: Saqi Books, 2013).
For example, N. Sakr, Arab Media and Political Renewal: Community, Legitimacy and Public Life, Library of Modern Middle East Studies (London; New York: LB. Tauris, 2007).
For example, A. Abdelali, “Wave of Change in the Arab World and Chances for a Transition to Democracy,” Contemporary Arab Affairs 6, no. 2 (2013): 207.
J. Schwedler, J. Stacher, and S. P. Yadav, “Three Powerful Wrong—and Wrongfully Powerful—American Narratives about the Arab Spring,” in The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of an Old Order? ed. Bassam Haddad, Rosie Bsheer, and Ziad Abu-Rish (London: Pluto, 2012).
T. Ramadan, The Arab Awakening: Islam and the New Middle East (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 6.
Delia Porta et al., Globalization from below; Tarrow, New Transnational Activism; C. Tilly and S. Tarrow, Contentious Politics (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press, 2007);
C. Tilly, Contentious Performances (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
J. Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
A. Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984).
See also M. Hofius, J. Wilkens, H. Hansen-Magnusson, and S.Gholiagha, (2014), “‘Den Schleier lichten? Kritische Normenforschung, Freiheit und Gleichberechtigung im Kontext des’: Arabischen Frühlings Eine Replik auf Engelkamp/Glaab/Renner, Ulbert und Deitelhoff/Zimmermann,” Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehunge, 21 no. 2 (2014): 85–105.
M. Bevir and R. A. W. Rhodes, The State as Cultural Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
For example, V. Pouliot, “The Essence of Constructivism,” Journal of International Relations and Development 7, no. 3 (2004);
J. Milliken, “The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique of Research and Methods,” European Journal of International Relations 5, no. 2 (1999).
J. Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key—Volume Ii: Imperialism and Civic Freedom, Ideas in Context (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008);
J. M. Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory 1760–2010 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
E. W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Penguin, 2003 [1978]).
K. N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, Addison-Wesley Series in Political Science (Reading, MA: Addis on-Wesley Publishing Company, 1979), 66.
S. M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987).
B. Hansen, Unipolarity and the Middle East (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000).
M. N. Barnett, Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
S. Stetter, World Society and the Middle East: Reconstructions in Regional Politics, Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
B. Buzan and A. Gonzalez-Pelaez, International Society and the Middle East: English School Theory at the Regional Level (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
S. Stetter, The Middle East and Globalization: Encounters and Horizons (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 5.
M. Ayoob, “Subaltern Realism:International Relations Theory Meets the Third World,” in International Relations Theory and the Third World, ed. Stephanie G. Neuman (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998);
M. N. Barnett, “Radical Chic? Subaltern Realism: A Rejoinder,” International Studies Review 4, no. 3 (2002).
M. J. Bayly, “The ‘Re-Turn’ to Empire in Ir: Colonial Knowledge Communities and the Construction of the Idea of the Afghan Polity, 1809–38,” Review of International Studies, First View (2013): 21.
J. H. H. Weiler, The Constitution of Europe: ‘Do the New Clothes Have an Emperor?’ And Other Essays on European Integration (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
S. Guzzini, “A Reconstruction of Constructivism in International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations 6, no. 2 (2000);
L. A. Brand, “Middle East Studies and Academic Freedom: Challenges at Home and Abroad,” International Studies Perspectives 8, no. 4 (2007).
A. Acharya, “Dialogue and Discovery: In Search of International Relations Theories beyond the West,” Millennium—Journal of International Studies 39, no. 3 (2011): 620.
G. W. Brown “The Constitutionalization of What?” Global Constitutionalism 1, no. 2 (2012): 201.
J. L. Dunoff and J. P. Trachtman, Ruling the World?: Constitutionalism, International Law, and Global Governance (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
For example, Tully, Strange Multiplicity; J. Habermas, Zur Verfassung Europas. Ein Essay (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2011);
J. L. Cohen, Globalization and Sovereignty: Rethinking Legality, Legitimacy, and Constitutionalism (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
R. Bellamy, Political Constitutionalism: A Republican Defence of the Constitutionality of Democracy (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007);
A. F. Lang, “From Revolutions to Constitutions: The Case of Egypt,” International Affairs 89, no. 2 (2013).
A. Wiener, The Invisible Constitution of Politics : Contested Norms and International Encounters (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008);
A. Wiener and U. Puetter, “The Quality of Norms Is What Actors Make of It: Critical Constructivist Research on Norms,” Journal of International Law and International Relations 5, no. 1 (2009).
Tully, Strange Multiplicity; J. Brunnée and S. J. Toope, “Interactional International Law and the Practice of Legality,” in International Practices, ed. Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011);
A.Wiener, “Demokratischer Konstitutionalismus Jenseits Des Staates? Perspektiven Auf Die Umstrittenheit Von Normen,” in Anarchie Der Kommunikativen Freiheit: Jürgen Habermas Und Die Theorie Der Internationalen Politik, ed. Peter Niesen and Benjamin Herborth (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2007).
“Sectarianism” is one of the most fundamental examples in modern history of the region in this regard and continues to be a dominant social construction in the interaction of different local and global actors. Compare also U. S. Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
Tully, Public Philosophy, 164. Compare also S. E. Merry “Legal Pluralism,” Law & Society Review 22, no. 5 (1988).
A. Wiener and S. Oeter, “Constitutionalism Unbound: Pitfalls, Potentials, Power Shifts,” in workshop, Global Constitutionalism: Legal Concepts and Emerging Transnational Orders (Dresden 2013), 2.
A. Wiener, A. F. Lang Jr., J. Tully, M. P. Maduro, and M. Kumm, “Global Constitutionalism: Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law,” Global Constitutionalism 1, no. 1 (2012).
A. Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005);
M.-L. Frick and A. T. Millier, Islam and International Law: Engaging Self-Centrism from a Plurality of Perspectives, Brill’s Arab and Islamic Law Series (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
R. Hinnebusch, The International Politics of the Middle East, Regional International Politics Series (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 2003).
L. Sadiki, “The Void of Power and the Power of the Void—Arab Societies’ Negotiation of Democratic Faragh,” in Democratic Transition in the Middle East: Unmaking Power, ed. Larbi Sadiki, Heiko Wimmen, and Layla Al-Zubaidi (London: Routledge, 2013), 12.
A. R. Takriti, Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman 1965–1976 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 6.
H. Brunkhorst, “Constitutionalism and Democracy in the World Society,” in The Twilight of Constitutionalism? ed. Petra Dobner and Martin Loughlin (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 180.
A. Zarakol, After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West, Cambridge Studies in International Relations (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
G. Aching, “On Colonial Modernity: Civilization Versus Sovereignty in Cuba, C. 1840,” in International Relations and Non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Colonialism and Investigations of Global Modernity, ed. Robbie Shilliam (London; New York: Routledge, 2011), 29.
J. Brunnée and S. J. Toope, Legitimacy and Legality in International Law: An Interactional Account, Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010);
N. M. Rajkovic, “‘Global Law’ and Governmentality: Reconceptualizing the ‘Rule of Law’ as Rule ‘through’ Law,” European journal of International Relations 18, no. 1 (2012): 45.
J. Allain, “Orientalism and International Law: The Middle East as the Underclass of the International Legal Order,” Leiden journal of International Law 17, no. 2 (2004);
S. N. Abboud and B. J. Muller “Geopolitics, Insecurity and Neocolonial Exceptionalism: A Critical Appraisal of the Un Special Tribunal for Lebanon,” Security Dialogue 44, no. 5–6(2013).
L. Lixinski, “Narratives of the International Legal Order and Why They Matter,” Erasmus Law Review 6, no. 1 (2013): 2.
F. Halliday, The Middle East in International Relations: Power, Politics and Ideology (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005);
R. Hinnebusch, “The Politics of Identity in Middle East International Relations,” in International Relations of the Middle East, ed. Louise Fawcett (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
M. Khalifa, “The Impossible Partition of Syria,” Arab Reform Initiative (2013). Accessed at: http://www.arab-reform.net/impossible-partition-syria.
R. D. Benford and D. A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 613.
A. Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).
J. Beinin and F. Vairel, “Introduction: The Middle East and North Africa beyond Classical Social Movement Theory,” in Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa, ed. Joel Beinin and Frédéric Vairel (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 11.
D. Delia Porta and M. Keating, eds., Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences: A Pluralist Perspective (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
L. Khalili, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 11.
Wiener and Puetter, “The Quality of Norms.” On contestation compare, in particular, A. Wiener, A Theory of Contestation (Berlin: Springer, 2014).
C. Tripp, The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 2.
J. T. Chalcraft and Y Noorani, eds., Counterhegemony in the Colony and Postcolony (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
M. M. Hafez, “Armed Islamist Movements and Political Violence in Algeria,” Middle East Journal 54, no. 4 (2000);
J. D. Le Sueur, Algeria since 1989: Between Terror and Democracy (Halifax; London et al.: Fernwood Publishing and Zed Books, 2010).
O. Ashour, The Deradicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements, Contemporary Terrorism Studies (London; New York: Routledge, 2009).
K. Hroub, “A ‘New Hamas’ through Its New Documents,” Journal of Palestine Studies 35, no. 4 (2006);
M. I. Jensen, The Political Ideology of Hamas: A Grassroots Perspective (London; New York: I. B. Tauris, 2009);
M. Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001);
S. M. Roy, Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector (Princeton, NJ; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011).
S. N. Abboud and B. J. Muller, Rethinking Hizballah: Legitimacy, Authority, Violence (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).
K. Dalacoura, Islam, Liberalism and Human Rights: Implications for International Relations, 3rd ed. (London; New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007);
F. Volpi, ed. Political Islam: A Critical Reader (London; New York: Routledge, 2011);
S. Zubaida, Law and Power in the Islamic World (London; New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003).
A. A. Sachedina, Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
A. A. Razek, Islam and the Foundations of Political Power, trans. Maryam Loutfi (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012 [1925]);
N. J. Brown, Constitutions in a Nonconstitutional World: Arab Basic Laws and the Prospects for Accountable Government (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002);
R. Grote and T. J. Roder, Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: Between Upheaval and Continuity (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
L. T. Darling, A History of Social Justice and Political Power in the Middle East: The Circle of Justice from Mesopotamia to Globalization (London; New York: Routledge, 2012).
Adib-Moghaddam, A Metahistory; F. Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and Politics in the Middle East (London; New York: I. B. Tauris, 1996).
H. Dabashi, The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (London: Zed, 2012).
A. Adib-Moghaddam, “The Arab Revolts, Islam and Postmodernity,” Middle East Journal of Culture & Communication 5, no. 1 (2012).
R. Hinnebusch, “Syria: From ‘Authoritarian Upgrading’ to Revolution?” International Affairs 88, no. 1 (2012).
K. Dalacoura, “The 2011 Uprisings in the Arab Middle East: Political Change and Geopolitical Implications,” International Affairs 88, no. 1 (2012).
T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1950).
A. Wiener, “The Dual Quality of Norms and Governance beyond the State: Sociological and Normative Approaches to ‘Interaction,’” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 10, no. 1 (2007).
H. P. Glenn, The Cosmopolitan State (Oxford; New York: Oxford Universtiy Press, 2013).
B.Anderson, Imagined Communities (London; New York: Verso, 1983).
F. Kratochwil and J. G. Ruggie, “International Organization: A State of the Art on an Art of the State,” International Organization 40, no. 4 (1986): 766.
C. Tilly, The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975);
C. Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, Ad 990–1992 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).
F. Kratochwil, “Citizenship: On the Border of Order,” in The Return of Culture and Identity in Ir Theory, ed. Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishing, 1996);
C. Tilly, Citizenship, Identity and Social History (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995);
A. Wiener, “Towards Global Citizenship Practice?” in Citizenship and Security: The Constitution of Political Being, ed. Jef Huysmans and Xavier Guillaume (London; New York: Routldege, 2013).
P. J. Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996);
R. L. Jepperson, A. Wendt, and P. J. Katzenstein, “Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security,” in The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
M. Bevir and R. A. W. Rhodes, “Interpretation and Its Others,” Australian Journal of Political Science 40, no. 2 (2005): 171.
I. B. Neumann “Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 31, no 3, (2002): 629–30.
V. Pouliot, International Security in Practice: The Politics of NATO-Russia Diplomacy (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1.
B. G. Glaser and A. L. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1967).
Franke and Roos Rekonstruktive Methoden Der Weltpolitikforschung: Anwendungs-beispiele Und Entwicklungstendenzen, Forschungsstand Politikwissenschaft (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2013).
Compare for example P. T. Jackson, The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and Its Implications for the Study of World Politics (London: Routledge, 2011);
D. Yanow and P. Schwartz-Shea, Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn (Armonk; London: M. E. Sharpe, 2006);
A. Klotz and D. Prakash, Qualitative Methods in International Relations: A Pluralist Guide (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
A. K. Kadhim, Governance in the Middle East and North Africa: A Handbook (London: Routledge, 2013).
There are of course some insightful contributions that are concerned with different aspects of the uprisings for example Achcar, The People Want, Adib-Moghaddam, On the Arab Revolts and the Iranian Revolution: Power and Resistance Today (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013);
J. Beinin and F. Vairel, eds., Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa, 2nd ed., Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013);
L. Sadiki, H. Wimmen, and L. Al-Zubaidi, Democratic Transition in the Middle East: Unmaking Power (London: Routledge, 2013);
Tripp, The Power and the People; F. A. Gerges, ed. The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014);
D. Delia Porta, Mobilizing for Democracy: Comparing 1989 and 2011 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014);
M. Lynch, ed. The Arab Uprisings Explained: New Contentious Politics in the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2015 Fawaz A. Gerges
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wilkens, J. (2015). Contention and Constitutionalization in the Global Realm: Assessing the Uprisings in West Asia and North Africa and Their Impact On International Politics. In: Gerges, F.A. (eds) Contentious Politics in the Middle East. Middle East Today. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137530868_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137530868_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-53720-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-53086-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political Science CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)